Saturday, April 12, 2014

Was that an earthquake, or an ordinary sonic boom, that rattled Southern California on Wednesday afternoon — or was it the return of Aurora, the nation’s long-rumored, never-confirmed, some-say-mythological super-secret, super-fast spy plane?

Whew. Steady now, X-Files folks.

First, here’s what The Times reported: About 1 p.m. Wednesday, folks from Malibu to Orange County felt what many assumed was an earthquake. For example, Scott Conner, who lives in Malibu, said the shaking was so intense that it almost toppled one of his computer monitors. “I thought it was the biggest quake I’ve ever been in…. This thing was big, big,” he said. “The whole house just lifted.”

Nope, said famed Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton. No earthquakes were reported in the area during that time. “It’s not an earthquake. It’s probably an offshore sonic boom,” Hutton said.

Correct, said the Navy, which confirmed that an aircraft flew faster than the speed of sound as part of an exercise with the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan about 50 miles off the coast.

Not so fast, said Malibu’s Conner, sticking to his quake story: “I’ve been around air force bases. I know what sonic booms are. There was no boom either,” Conner said.

Which is where I come in, me and my theory: Call it “the Aurora Anomaly” (I don’t know why, it just sounds cool).